Beyond Crap: Idiocy from Stephen Arnold

The following is a comment I posted to Stephen Arnold’s Beyond Search blog, in response to a posting by his employee Cynthia Murrell titled Big Claims of Analytics Progress. (A footer reads “Written by Stephen E. Arnold.”) Do read Murrell’s manure, if only to understand how not to blog. Thankfully the article is short. Further, it’s so laughable as sacrifice any credibility. Still, I had a hard time leaving it unanswered. Here’s what I posted:

Your debunking is ill-founded, even idiotic, consisting of precisely and only two nonsensical points:

1) “But. . . isn’t that what they all say?” Your logic is that because (Ventana Research is reporting that) Clarabridge is claiming to do what others claim to do, then Clarabridge must not be doing it.

2) Because Clarabridge, according to your analysis of Ventana’s report, hasn’t delivered “the next real breakthrough,” what they have delivered is unworthy.

In support, you offer nothing but unsubstantiated assertions that offer no support for your attempt to impugn a respected vendor and a respected industry analyst firm, and further you suggest some form of overly-cosy relationship — “these outfits and their cheerleaders” — that does not exist so far as I know.

Stephen Arnold, would you please state whether you support what your employee Cynthia Murrell has posted? If you do, please fill in the huge gaps in order to bring some semblance of substance to this piece. If you do not, please explain why you allow crap like this to be published under your name.

This isn’t the first instance of idiocy from Arnold (not that I read his blog regularly: I don’t). I covered a similar scurrilous attack on a vendor in early 2012, in my Stephen Arnold Blows a Gasket. Unfortunately, I doubt Stephen Arnold is done spewing crap.